I think it would’ve been smarter for them to keep thinking about adding an optical drive to the MBAir before they released it. Maybe they should’ve held off a year, if only to fix this issue. I think that no optical drive is a main reason why this is so unpopular. That and the fact that it only has two USB ports… and well, I guess 30 million other issues as well.
But I think that Apple should’ve taken more time to produce a drive built-in to the computer rather than spend their time trying to create a small, cool-looking external optical drive.